Group says immigrants mistreated in O.C.

Members of Friends of Orange County Detainees and other immigration rights advocates protest outside the Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility in Adelanto. COURTESY JAN MESLILN

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Jan Nelson Meslin is the founder of the Friends of Orange County Detainees, a group that visits detainees at immigration detention centers, including the Santa Ana Jail and the James A. Musick Facility in Irvine. She says the federal government has shut down her group's visitation effort after she and others went public with accusations that detainees have been mistreated. HANNAH POTES, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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An INS detainee takes a nap while at the James A. Musick Facility. Sheriff's officials said last year that a $100 million expansion is needed to handle an increasing prisoner population. H. LORREN AU JR., THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A 2010 view of where immigrant detainees sleep at the James A. Musick Facility in Irvine. H. LORREN AU JR., THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Members of Friends of Orange County Detainees and other immigration rights advocates protest outside the Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility in Adelanto. COURTESY JAN MESLILN

Leaders of an Orange County group that visits immigrant detainees say federal officials have suspended their visitation programs in an attempt to muzzle accusations that detainees are beaten, underfed and harassed at two of the three primary detention facilities in Southern California.

Members of Friends of Orange County Detainees in recent months publicly criticized guards at Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana for withholding medication and retaliating against immigrant detainees for minor infractions. Members of a related group, Friends of Adelanto Detainees, say they've been barred from entering the Adelanto Detention Facility after posting accounts on Facebook that accuse guards and customs officials of hitting, cursing and underfeeding detainees.

Those complaints – and the July 24 decision by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to bar both groups from visiting detainees – sparked a protest Tuesday by about 70 immigration rights advocates outside the Adelanto center. The protest included an attempt to defy the suspension by visiting an Italian immigrant who most recently lived in Santa Ana.

The stalemate also prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to send a letter to ICE on Tuesday, demanding that visitation rights be restored for those trying to help immigrant detainees, and accusing the government of unconstitutionally "attempting to silence its critics and limit the public's awareness of conditions in immigration detention."

"We have a constitutional right to express ourselves," said Jan Meslin, founder of the Orange County group, which over the past year has visited detainees kept in custody at the Men's Central Jail in Santa Ana and the James A. Musick Facility in Irvine while awaiting federal rulings on their immigration status.

In an emailed statement Haley said immigration officials "are conducting further review of the Friends of Adelanto/Orange County Detainees programs and plan ongoing discussion with the groups' leadership on how the program can be most beneficial to those in ICE custody. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is committed to transparency and community engagement."

The letter from the ACLU was cosigned by more than two dozen national immigrants' rights advocates and clergy members from various denominations.

Victoria Mena, founder of the Adelanto visitors group, said ICE's actions are "all in retaliation" for visitors' public comments about jail conditions, including Mena's recent accusation, made in a radio interview, that an Adelanto detainee had complained of being fed "one piece of bread, one piece of lettuce and a melon scooper of tuna salad" in a typical dinner.

Now, "I'm not allowed to stand in the presence of the front door" of the detention center, Mena said. "I'm completely banned."

Southern California jails are a major component in America's sprawling immigration detention system. Nearly 2,000 immigrants are held in the Santa Ana, Irvine and Adelanto detention centers.

The immigrants are not under criminal indictment and are not afforded constitutional protections of the criminal justice system. Some detainees are held on immigration violations; others entered the U.S. as refugees or are seeking asylum.

Since its founding in September, Friends of Orange County Detainees has visited nearly 100 immigrants in Orange County jails. Detainees are often isolated because their families are too poor, far away or frightened of authorities to visit.

Meslin said her group had an amicable relationship with ICE field officers at Men's Central Jail and the Musick Facility, and had recently been granted permission to visit detainees at the maximum security Theo Lacy Facility in Orange. She said she received a call July 24 from Andres Quinones, the ICE field officer at Men's Central Jail, who said, "You've been temporarily suspended." Meslin said Quinones could offer no explanation except that "it's coming down the chain of command from a national level."

The following week, on a conference call with customs officials in Washington, D.C., Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, a deputy director of ICE detention programs, told Meslin and other advocates the suspension was in response to a July 22 blog post on the Huffington Post in which Meslin and other members of her group were quoted criticizing conditions at Men's Central Jail.

Lorenzen-Strait did not return a call seeking comment. Quinones referred a request for comment to Haley, the ICE spokeswoman.

Meslin said local jail officials have continued letting members of her group visit a few detainees with whom they have established relationships.

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